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National Security Advisor Shivshankar Menon on March 5 released the book "Samudra Manthan: Sino-India Rivalry in the Indo-Pacific", authored by Dr. C. Raja Mohan, Head of the Strategic Affairs Programme of Observer Research Foundation.

NEW DELHI, NOVEMBER 29: The Chairman of the National Security Advisory Board and President of the Centre for International Affairs of Observer Research Foundation, Mr. Maharajakrishna Rosgotra here today called for concerted efforts to find alternative sources of energy, especially solar energy.

The least reported link in the otherwise raging controversy over Pakistan¿s nuclear proliferation happened on January 1, 2004, at the Denver International Airport. Asher Karni, 50, a Jewish businessman from South Africa, was snared in a sting operation launched by the US Commerce Department and other federal agencies.

Senator Douglas Roche has urged the India to lead the movement for disarmament of nuclear weapons, saying India under the leadership of Dr. Manmohan Singh was serious about nuclear disarmament.

Observer Research Foundation (ORF), New Delhi, hosted a talk on Monday, September 18, 2006, by Brookings Institution President Strobe Talbott on "US Foreign Policy in the Presidential Election Season".

Highlighting the inevitability of Nuclear power being an essential requirement to address India's growing Energy security needs in the time to come, Mr Shashidhar Reddy, Vice Chairman National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) said.

There is a definite need for India to reconsider its doctrine or a strategy to counter and/or deter use of Tactical Nuclear Weapons weapons by Pakistan for non-strategic (say battlefield) purposes.

A closer reading of the joint statement issued by Chinese President Xi Jinping after a meeting with the President of Ukraine, Viktor Yanukovych last month, suggested China was merely offering boiler plate assurances to Ukraine.

If the first term of President Obama is any indication, U.S. foreign policy will to continue to develop in a cautious, limited, pragmatic, yet largely reactive manner. There will be few American efforts to order the new multipolar world, or respond proactively to much of anything.

Hard line Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu must know a few things about Andalusia, of which Cordoba was once the capital. His father Professor Benzion Netanyahu specialized in the history of the Jews in Spain!

Though Obama does not want the Tibetan question complicate his effort to build a sustainable partnership with Beijing, he does not want to appear abandoning the human rights issues in China and alienate a significant section of domestic elite opinion.

Alleging the Assad regime's involvement in the last week's chemical attack in the Damascus suburbs, President Barrack Obama said that he has decided to take military action against Syria by launching limited military strike.

Obama's China policy, motivated by an increasing level of interdependence, will involve constructive engagement with China. However, simultaneously, the US will also seek to ensure that their image of being a great power in Pacific-Asia does not change, according to US scholar Prof. Ronald W. Pruessen.

The inadequacy of Barack Obama's Afghanistan and Pakistan strategy stems from the exigencies of the calendar of the next presidential elections in America,

President Obama is definitely more confident and on a high note, though mindful of the fact that his political capital will not last long into his second term; that he has very little time and leeway in which to enact and achieve some of the priorities he stressed during his address.

In search of saliency in the Obama visit, pundits have missed out on "Indo-US" co-operation in Afghanistan, a major shift since the narrative so far has been about US-Pak collaboration in the Af-Pak theatre.

All those, who were until the other day shrugging their shoulders and despairing at no "deliverable" packages during the Obama visit, suddenly have a relaxed pensiveness in their eyes which comes from the dawning of realism. In essence, the visit will be directional, not "destinational".

What India needs badly is FDI with it technology transfer and hopefully that would come after Obama's India visit. The inflows have already raised India's reserves to $322 billion recently. Also, the stock market has been on the roll before and after Obama's visit, though because of reasons other than the visit.

By now, even reluctant observers of American politics would have easily discerned that economy will largely decide who will win the November presidential elections.

New Delhi's knee-jerk political protestations against Barack Obama's remarks on the stalled economic reforms in India have missed out on far more important comments from the President of the United States about Jammu and Kashmir.

In the end, every great power will have to accept the spheres of influence or "special interest zones" of other powers so that there are no clashes in interests. The world will have to adjust to polycentricism and to big powers occasionally rubbing against each other, even if there are no hot conflicts.

The US needs to seriously reconsider its policy of advising African countries about how they go about their foreign policy or risk losing any goodwill it has left in the region. Also, perhaps, Obama's Africa visit has come too late in the day and his promises are too little to entice the Africans.

Barack Obama's strategic problem now is to reassure east Asian allies of the strength of American commitment to them without provoking an unwanted conflict between the US and China.

Myanmar hosted US President Barack Obama this week in Nay Pyi Taw for the ASEAN and East Asia Summit. Obama, who visited the former 'paraiah State' for the second time in three years, said that the reforms in Myanmar were real but incomplete.

Pakistan's cooperation against extremist groups has been selective, targetting those threatening its own stability but avoiding action against the Afghan Taliban seen as strategic assets for controlling Afghanistan once the US withdrew

As US President Obama reshapes America's relationships in the Middle East, new equations are likely to emerge within the region and more Space will be created for China to win over the old allies of the US.

The basic purpose for Obama to have undertaken the nocturnal visit to Kabul is to show the Republicans as the misguided war mongers who thrust two wars on a nation in recession. True, Afghanistan was a war of choice but now unpopular at home. He would like to appear to be the leader who called back the troops.

Even as the United States tries to retract from being labelled the global policeman, it still cannot ignore the calls that come from being the sole superpower in the world, notwithstanding debates about its relative decline.

Following President Obama's State of the Union address, polls show Obama leading the Republican Presidential frontrunners Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich. The next few months will tell us whether Obama will be able to convert this into another Presidential term.

At the Obama- Xi talks, there has been some movement forward on the so-far intractable issue of Hydroflurocarbon (HFCs) emissions. Washington and Beijing have agreed to work together to eliminate the use of HFCs and persuade countries like India to join this effort. This could mean trouble for the tenuous alliance of BASIC.

It might be an interesting detail for a US President who has come up the Civil Rights ladder. The role caste politics in India has played in boosting Indo-US ties in recent years.

The current US presidential campaign, which is about to come to a close, has been replete with spins disseminated by the spin-masters of President George Bush as well as Senator John Kerry.

The first meeting of the ORF-Pacific Council Task Force on India-US Relations was held at Jamnagar on March 18-19, 2004.

The Afghan Election Commission has set the next presidential elections for April 5, 2014. This move has been welcomed in the country as well as by the international community as a positive development.

Though the Japanese financial aid to Myanmar was used for purposes other than serving the interests of the people, the debt should be considered odious, and waived off to free the people from the woes of the debt incurred to aid their repression.

The advent of yet another coalition regime at the Centre has suddenly raised questions about ¿coordination¿ between the party and the Government. Already there are talks of power-centres, in turn setting a bad precedent at one level, and leaving a bad taste at another.

Reports that the Centre is considering the winding up of the Task Force on the possibly over-ambitious project for the inter-linking of rivers need to be received with concern. It is nobody's case that the report, or the project, should be accepted in toto,

Whoever thought that ¿terrorising¿ the people of one¿s own country through dictatorial methods is equivalent to terrorism, as generally understood, is learning a new lesson in Iraq. With the failure to prove that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass-destruction even months after the despot¿s exit, the US is finding that to the average Iraqi, it is not a ¿liberator¿ but an ¿occupier¿.

The President of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has earned the ire of the world by his much publicised remarks about the Holocaust. His logic is convoluted; his indiscretion has not gone un-noticed in Iran and in the world at large. A debate has also surfaced about the language used, its syntax and context.

Egypt, because of its huge population and central role in history has traditionally been the heart of "Arab Street" in world affairs. It has always been the cultural capital of the Arab world - Egyptian Arabic is understood throughout the Arab world,

Tax heavens will exist as long as corrupt corporations and looting dictators do. The only way in which tax heavens can be countered is through technological development, and systems like Swift, which increase transparency of transactions, suggested noted investment analyst Mr. K. Arunachalam.

The tragedy of the Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar has got much attention from the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation. Indonesia, the world's largest Muslim nation and a leader of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, has sought to promote a constructive engagement between the OIC and Myanmar, which is a member of the ASEAN, on the Rohingya problem.

A week ago, oil giant Chevron-Texaco's Nigerian unit decided to keep its production of 23,000 barrels a day shut till its oil facilities attacked and damaged by members of the Ijaw tribe are found to be in order. Disruption of oil operations, hostage taking, inter-ethnic clashes are not new for Nigeria¿s oil-rich Niger Delta.

There will be no respite from rising international oil prices, according to internationally renowned oil expert Dr. A.F. Alhajji. Delivering a lecture at Observer Research Foundation (ORF), New Delhi, on July 26, 2005,

Though India and Pakistan have been working on improving bilateral trade, the recent meeting of Experts' Group on Trade in Petroleum and Petrochemical Products come in the wake of the ongoing energy crisis in Pakistan.